Chocolate states! A chocolate mold tutorial

I experimented with making chocolates for my old roommate Jane’s bridal shower last week. She just got married this past weekend in Massachusetts but the happy newlyweds will be moving out west to California in a couple months. I thought chocolates in those two state shapes would be cute for her party. The MA chocolates were made in regular chocolate and the CA ones were dark chocolate. Except for the temptation to lick the spoon every 2 minutes, my foray into chocolateering was pretty uneventful though a little time consuming. I only had one molding tray of each state so it took the better part of an afternoon to make about 50 pieces. Luckily I had hours of college basketball to watch with the NCAA tournament is going on. The only warning I have is that this is a pretty messy project! Jeff almost let me walk out of the house for dinner with a chocolate smudge on my face, but he’s a much better person than I am.

For these chocolates, I used Wiltons candy melts. I’ve used fancier chocolates before but I found these to be the easiest to work with and they taste pretty good. You don’t have to use a double broiler to melt these, just stick in the microwave and nuke at 30 second intervals, stirring in between. If it starts to harden again, just stick in the microwave again. I found that after 60 seconds, the chocolate was at the right consistency:

Then spoon the melted chocolate in the molds or use a piping bag. I ordered the state molds online at Sugarcraft. This part can get messy if you aren’t careful. It helps to gently tap the molds against the table so that air bubbles rise to the top. Then I popped the air bubbles with a toothpick. Let cool and after 15 minutes, they should pop out easily:

After you pop them out of the molds, store them on a parchment lined baking sheet:

**Right about now is when my beloved Dukies got bounced from the Sweet Sixteen and I had the urge to stuff my face with this entire tray to console myself. I almost undid an entire afternoon’s worth of work.

Since Jane and her fiance met and fell in love in Boston, I wanted to add a small pink heart on the Bay State chocolates. I melted some of the white chocolate and added a few small drops of pink gel food color (note: do not to use liquid food coloring, any liquid in the chocolate will mess up the consistency and you will end up with a tootsie roll-like mush):

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